words with contradictory meanings

cleave

ambivalent

before

weather

secreted (bit fo a cheat?)

Don't get "weather"?

inflammable

"Inflammable" has just one meaning.

"ridden" confuses me

like, you might think that a flea-ridden dog would be a dog who'd been ridden of fleas, but it is in fact a dog which is still being ridden by fleas

perhaps this is only confusing in my worry-ridden head

I thought "ridden" in that sense came from "ride", i.e. worries are riding your head.

to weather something is to get by without significant damage, but if something is 'weathered' it's usually quite badly dmaaged

just imo

Ok, that clears it up.

I think you're right, Tuomas, but the two verbs have the same past participle - admittedly there isn't really an overlap in usage, but

Bedridden - being ridden by beds

I think it's supposed to be metaphorical: you're "ridden" by something, i.e. it takes over you - like a loa riding a Voodoo priest.

ridden
mid-14c., pp. of ride (q.v.). Sense evolution, via horses, from "that which has been ridden upon, broken in" (1520s) to, in compounds, "oppressed, taken advantage of" (1650s).

guilt-ridden, bed-ridden, etc

sanction

"Inflammable" has just one meaning.

Properly yes, but it's often misused to mean "not flammable"

damnit there was an xword clue where the answer was a word which meant cut or join, and wasn't cleave. but i can't remember what it was.

dock!

Figurative

fast

What meanings of "fast" are contradictory?

c'mon now you can't do this every time

stuck fast

damnit there was an xword clue where the answer was a word which meant cut or join, and wasn't cleave. but i can't remember what it was.

clip?

stuck fast

But the it's the "stuck" part here that's contradictory, not "fast".

xp nah i answered myself up there, it was dock. how does clip = join?

(8) firmly fixed in place; not easily moved; securely attached.

(xp)

sanction

AWESOME example

ledge - "paper clip"

"Fast" in that sense just means "tightly", which is not in direct contradiction with "fast", meaning "speedy".

xp nah i answered myself up there, it was dock. how does clip = join?

when you clip things together, eg with a paperclip

i used to know loads of these. "cleave" is the classic imo.

dyke

wear

... similar to weather

funny how "old" can mean "young" in some contexts.

If I talk about "the old me", I'm referring to the way I was in the olden days, when I was young.

^ kinda how 'before' works in my head

hmm, I don't q

*hmm, I don't quite follow you, darraghmac

well your future is before you, but you can also look back on something that happened 'before' now

literal

^ nah, there's actually a thread on how this is just misused

ha as there is for 'actually', actually

PRESCRIPTIVIST!

xxxp ah, clever

boned

skim

suck

haha i didn't see boned. i suppose this works in the same way.

skim

― Chaim Poutine (NickB),

losing you here tbh- as in 'to read quickly'?

eg “she’s lost to me now”

He went to California
Hearing that everything's warmer there
So you write him a letter and say "Her eyes are blue"
He sends you a poem and she's lost to you

Compare "you're dead to me."

Here’s another example from the book:

[French General] Joffre’s object, not yet fully formulated, was to deploy across the rear of the Germans’ thickening front on the Chemin des Dames and so to regain possession of the northern departments, rich in agriculture and industry, lost to France during August.

I think it’s a bit more intuitive in the first person. “The northern departments were lost to us during August.”

Why not say 'Lost BY the British'?

i feel like that's just bad writing/editing but

It's idiomatic for Keegan. In the same way, he wouldn't think twice about saying "shedule" or "take a decision." Or the way someone might say that their hair "needs washed" vs "needs to be washed."

i feel like in order to write like that youd almost have to have a perspective of not just default thinking that the reader is british and reading from that perspective but that you havent imagined that they could be anything else

and even then its forced

"i need a poo"

could mean you're looking to gain a poo but equally could mean you've got one you'd like to get rid of

- Sir John Keegan, OBE

- David Foster Wallace

Tapped

“The keg is tapped” can mean both that a tap has been inserted and it is ready to dispense drinks, and that it’s now completely empty and no longer able to dispense drinks

by the way I always learned that these were called “Janus words”, after Roman god Janus,who looks in opposite directions at the same time, as seen in Janus Films’ logo

...and today's date...

Cool

"Paul Weller was cool towards us"

1) "he came over had a chat and a laff before going back to his dressing room"

2) "he completely ignored us and anything we asked him..."

maybe it comes down to a difference between the UK and the US, but nobody in America would ever want to talk to Paul Weller

I was just thinking of the phrase "kick out the jams." These days you might hear something like, "that band can kick out the jams," meaning they can produce jams and that's a good thing. Whereas the MC5 originally used "kick out the jams" as a command to mean stop jamming.

I thought it was about sandwich ingredients

After over 125 years in business, Smuckers can still kick out the jams

Kick out the jams, Mother Smuckers!

maybe it's actually 'kick out the jambs' aka the door frame

(My band, showing up at the festival with the wrong outfits: "I thought you said wanted a yam band.")

"drop" (to release to the public) vs. "drop" (to remove/discontinue)

Just saw the headline "Norway Dropped as White Lotus Season 4 Location" and was completely baffled which meaning they meant (it was the latter)

to reduce

i'm having a hard time understanding what you mean

it can mean to diminish in the main sense but in cooking its a method of concentrating and strengthening

listen i don't mean to police the thread but that's pushing it

no imo

im quite happy to police the thread and that's far better than most submissions so there

ingratiating, kinda - sometimes people mean that a person endeared themselves to the room, and sometimes they mean a person tried and failed to endear themselves to the room

I think the word just means something like aiming to gain favour or approval from others in a sycophantic manner. That aim can meet with success or failure - but the meaning of the word doesn’t change ?

yes you're right it's really the verb "to ingratiate" that i'm opposing to the adjective "ingratiating" .. the latter is basically always negative isn't it? like someone is doing it in an annoying way. but you could say "he's ingratiating himself (in?)to the room" - same word, different part of speech - and it wouldn't necessarily have that connotation of being an obvious suck-up, in fact it might mean the opposite

Please patronize my business!

Stop patronizing me!

GARNISH, am I right

you are right and so was elmo argonaut 15 years ago but kudos it really is a canonical example of this sort of thing

I'm not right and the Connections on Aug 2 was bad No way that's purple: the NYT Connections thread
Grr @ elmo for making the Connections seem reasonable

Turgid, when applied to eg (a) a ballad, or (b) a river.

c) penis

advent

in the christian calendar it’s the time of waiting, BEFORE the big day

in secular usage it means the big thing has happened and we are now living in that new reality eg “the advent of steam power”

Please patronize my business!

Stop patronizing me!

A patron can be the owner of a business (esp. a restaurant) or a customer of it.

Hmm. Both "boss" and "benefactor." I guess a restaurant is saying the customer is king?

The negative sense in "don't patronize me" is sort of "don't pretend you're being magnanimous," almost "I don't need your generosity."

Peeled

Unpeeled

I never know whether "pitted" olives have pits or don't.

There are tons of those, pitted skinned boned

"Shell" as well.

boned vs deboned

idg this?
a peeled banana has been peeled. an unpeeled one hasn't.

We have a machine at work with 2 different calibrations for spelt wheat: DEHULLED and UNHULLED. They mean opposite things

xp i think the idea is you could plausibly say, "She unpeeled the banana." and most people would understand this to mean the banana had its peel removed.

Yeah it's adjective vs verb usage i think